JeffJournal

It’s not infrequent that we get “I don’t want to to my homework” e-mails to the LAM/MPI mailing lists. For example, students ask if anyone has parallel solutions to the N-queens problem, or if anyone has code they can share to solve sparse matrices in parallel, etc. Dead giveaways in these kinds of mails are the fact that they come from Yahoo! e-mail addresses (or other free e-mail sites such as hotmail), the timing is usually around the end of the Fall or Spring semester (i.e., it’s a “final project”), and asking for solutions to common or computer-science-specific kinds of problems.

Today, my boss got one of these e-mails sent directly to him. It’s unique in its audacity:

From: ...withheld for privacy... <aaaaaaaa@iitg.ernet.in>
Date: December 3, 2004 7:55:17 AM EST
Subject: need your help in C++ programming

Respected Sir,
            I am an undergraduate of dept. of mechanical engineering at
IIT Guwahati, INDIA.I passed through your site and tried to programmed a
program but could not succeed and that's why I need your help in C++
programming. The program i have to write is:

Please write a sparse matrix C++ class template. It should have the
usual accessors and  mutators and overloaded operators. Ideally, the
internal storage would be as condensed arraybut you are welcome to use STL
containers as well. Please write a unit test for your implementation
as well which I will be able to run to assess your code. Make sure that
your code compiles with the standard ISO/ANSI C++ compiler settings

       I request you to write this program for me.

While this is somewhat comical, it’s truly sad that:

• The guy clearly has no sense of ethics
• The guy is so stupid to ask a professor at a different university to write his homework for him

My boss forwarded this e-mail on to his department. Hopefully, he’ll learn the consequences of such actions.